Archive for category: Sustainable Development Goals

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The Outlook for Sustainable Development Goals

Outlook for Sustainable Development
In 2015, the United Nations launched the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to expand upon the progress of the Millennium Development Goals that were set from 2000 to 2015.

Comprised of 17 goals, the SDGs address issues such as poverty, education and health with the overall aim of achieving worldwide peace and prosperity by 2030. Three years into the initial reports on the outlook for Sustainable Development Goals express skepticism that these goals can be reached at the current rate of progress. The problems in meeting these goals are described below.

Eliminating Poverty

According to the World Bank, the rate of poverty reduction that more than halved the world population of people living in extreme poverty from 1990 to 2015 is currently in decline. The organization estimates that the annual rate of poverty reduction that was 2.5 percent from 2011 to 2013, will decrease to less than half a percentage point.

The World Bank has also calculated that the bottom 40 percent of people in terms of income would need to see a yearly income increase of eight percent or more for the next 12 years in order to meet the first SDG of reducing the global poverty rate to 3 percent or lower. The report also notes that income growth never reached this height from 2000 to 2015, despite the notable progress in poverty reduction during these years.

Improving Education

Although the information is scarce, the available data suggests that the current rate of progress in education is also too slow to meet designated targets by 2030. In its 2018 report, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) projects that at least 22 million children worldwide will be unable to participate in pre-primary education unless the current rate of progress doubles in countries that lag behind.

Low reading proficiencies among 15-year-old adolescents are of additional concern. According to the same UNICEF report, 26 percent of countries and 36 percent of 15-year-olds need to see faster improvement in reading proficiency in order to meet the target for quality education. This is without accounting the 70 percent of countries and 61 percent of 15-year-olds for which there is little or no data.

Providing Better Health Care

Along with education, health is considered one of the most important factors in fostering economic and other forms of development. The Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers Report provides recent data and future projections for 18 SDG indicators as a way of tracking the overall progress of the initiative, the majority of them pertaining to health. According to the 2018 report, the U.N. estimates that by 2030:

  • Mortality of children under the age of 5 will be reduced from 3,9 percent of live births to 2,6 percent, which is 1,4 higher than the target.
  • The rate of stunting in children under the age of 5 will be reduced from 27 percent to 22 percent, which is 7 percent above the target.
  • Basic vaccines will be available to anywhere from 74 to 90 percent of the world population, falling short of the goal to be accessible to all people.
  • Neglected tropical diseases will see a decrease from 17,000 to 13,000 per 100,000 people, well above the goal of 15,000 cases per 100,000.
  • Universal health coverage will be available to 72 percent of the global population, 3 percentage points higher than in 2017 but well below the goal of achieving universal coverage for everyone.

The Good News in the Outlook for Sustainable Development Goals

While the outlook for sustainable development in each of these reports is not ideal in terms of the time it will take to be achieved, data trends still show progress, not regression, in development. With 12 years remaining, the United Nations is still in the initial stages of its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. If the projections for 2030 fall short of the targets for the SDGs, they at least provide a better understanding of the extent of the resources necessary to improve the outlook for sustainable development goals going forward.

In consideration of the data, the World Bank, UNICEF and the Gates Foundation have all called for increased investment in world development. As a specific example, the World Bank has invested $3.2 billion in education programs for girls between 2016 and 2018, exceeding a commitment of $2.5 billion.

If all actors in the 2030 Agenda follow suit, the current outlook for Sustainable Development Goals does not have to determine the final extent of the world’s progress.

– Ashley Wagner
Photo: Flickr

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Five Reasons to Increase Literacy Rates

Reasons to Increase Literacy Rates
When living in the U.S, it is easy to forget that being able to read and write is not something allowed to every person in the world. However, when it was discovered that approximately 32 million Americans could not read at a basic level, society deemed this as a crisis.

Comparatively, though, the crisis of illiteracy is much scarier in developing countries. The CIA World Factbook defines literacy as being able to read and write when older than the age of 15. Countries like South Sudan, Niger, Afghanistan and Ethiopia have literacy rates below 40 percent of their total population. These countries also happen to be the most poverty-stricken countries. This connection leads to the importance of listing five reasons to increase literacy rates.

Five Reasons to Increase Literacy Rates

  1. By being able to read and write, citizens can further develop their education. It is a given that if citizens want a great education, they will have to increase literacy rates. To do this, countries need to prioritize primary education so that the children that are already in school can get a good base. In a report from UNICEF on world education and literacy, it is stated that the focus on primary education had already boosted literacy rates that in turn boosts further education.
  2. Illiterate adults are more likely to fall victim to poor health and to have poor health care treatment later in life. World Atlas reported that there are around 493 million women who are unable or have difficulties reading text messages, filling out forms and reading their doctor’s prescription. If a person cannot properly read documents and prescriptions from a doctor, they might sign off on something without knowing what exactly it is. On top of that, they might not know what medications are good for them. Not to mention, without being able to write, it would be near impossible to keep track of past ailments or family history in the health care system.
  3. Literate adults are more capable of being able to take care of their children. Parents who have a basic education have an easier time making sure their children live to be over the age of five. This way, the cycle of poverty can be broken. Also, parents who have already seen the importance of having an education are more likely to push for their children to get the same level of education. Combined with previous reasons, parents who can properly read their prescription labels will be able to give children the right medicine and with a higher level of education, they are also more likely to have a steady job.
  4. Literacy is one part of the Sustainable Development Goal number four under UNESCO’s plan to reduce global poverty. The goal number four references equal education, affordable further education, widespread scholarships safe and non-violent locations for education and an increase of qualified teachers in each country.
  5. It is very plausible to increase literacy rates and it is producing great results in other countries already. In India, the computer-based functional literacy (CBFL) solution is providing free and remote education to rural areas and low-income areas around the country. It aims to teach children how to read, write and do math in approximately 50 hours. On top of that, the system focuses on teaching words rather than the whole alphabet. The typical participant learns around 500 words that are enough for him to navigate everyday life. More than 700,000 people have already benefited from CBFL in India.

These five reasons to increase literacy rates described in the article above showcase how being able to read and write can vastly improve someone’s life. Even if it does not fully bring them out of extreme poverty, these people will at least have the tools to make progress for themselves. Giving such tools is the least the world can do to help those in need and decrease the world poverty.

– Miranda Garbaciak
Photo: Flickr

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Big Data and the Fight Against Global Poverty

Big Data
Three years into the United Nations’ latest agenda to fight global poverty and promote peace, health and justice, the chief Sustainable Development Goal of 2030 to end extreme poverty has become a contest to procure and deliver the right resources for the world’s most vulnerable people at just the right pace. There is a race against rising inequality and time, but some economic circles have come to regard one performance-enhancing resource as more valuable than oil and with the potential to boost poverty relief — big data.

Big Data to End Global Poverty

During a lecture at Singularity University Global Summit 2018, a lead economist for the World Bank, Wolfgang Fengler, shared his curiosity about using data to end global poverty by asking, “What would it take to create a data revolution for the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals]?” Fengler oriented summit-goers to subterranean depths as he compared big data to oil, and emphasized how their values are only realized in the efficiency of its production modes: collection, refinement and delivery in a usable form.

In 1990, 1.9 billion people were considered extremely impoverished; in 2015, the final year of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, that number was 836 million, a 66 percent decrease. Pointing to the World Poverty Clock, a real-time dashboard for poverty numbers created by Fengler, the current global poverty escape rate is 1.1 people per second. That rate should be 1.6 people per second to put an end to global poverty by 2030.

World Poverty Clock

The World Poverty Clock shows data from specific countries, and these types of snapshots provide reliable stories that can inform effective policy and strategic poverty alleviation practices. According to Singularity Hub, next steps for the World Poverty Clock include presenting data by specific regions within countries with the idea in mind that there are region-specific issues related to poverty.

Forbes Magazine contributor Bernard Marr offers some corrections to the data and oil comparison, one that suggests much richer potential for data. Oil is a finite resource that requires a massive amount of ancillary resources to deliver a final product. Contrarily, data has a low cost of production and can become more useful with every use. He also contends big data is environmentally innocuous and has a wider variety of application beyond its crude state.

New Kind of Renewable Resource

While Marr takes issue with comparing big data to an “old world resource,” he does concede to its versatility and value in shrinking hunger and battling climate change. He likens it more so to a renewable energy source such as wind or the sun. The World Poverty Clock reports that poverty is rising in 13 African nations. Two of those nations are Africa’s largest oil exporters: Angola and Nigeria, which both produced more than 1.5 million barrels of oil in 2017.

Rounding out the rest of the African OPEC nations, Guinea and Libya are labeled as “off track,” or “unable to reach the sustainable development goal target at the current rate;” Gabon and Algeria are also considered to have “no extreme poverty.” In Nigeria, oil production accounts for 10 percent of the GDP of the new world capital of extreme poverty; almost half of the nation’s 180 million people live within poverty’s grips.In Angola, 30 percent of its 25 million live in extreme poverty; oil production is expected to comprise 10 percent of its GDP.

Combatting Poverty

These macro-level findings support The Economist’s and Forbes Magazine’s positions on data’s supremacy to oil as a precious resource for profit and a poverty alleviation tool. Crude oil has less of a guarantee, if any at all, to be wielded as such a resource as it does not necessarily translate to economic stability in nations where the gross national income per capita has been decreasing since 2015.

Just as marketing research uses big data to track discrete consumer insights — such as millennial spending trends or researchers’ use of data to identify the demographic most likely to be excessive sun tanners — big data has the power for direct combat against extreme poverty.

Big Data Around the Globe

In China, the Guizhou province developed a cloud-computing platform that tracks the financial status of 6 million impoverished people in 9,000 villages. China aims to usher 10 million people out of poverty annually from 2016 to 2020. In Tongzi county, the government issued subsidies to needy villagers and a data platform monitors the distribution of these subsidies, minimizing the risk of embezzlement by unscrupulous officials.

Zhou Xing, an expert of the poverty-relief office in Guizhou province, said, “Big data really helps make poverty-relief more precise and efficient.” On the days before big data, Xing added, “poverty relief work was difficult because the information of residents was written by hand and passed to central authorities via a series of local officials, which could be hampered by corruption.”

In Rwanda, American researchers have leveraged cellphone metadata to estimate wealth and poverty distributions and the telephoning habits of the affluent and those with more modest means.

Infinite Possibilities

Putting an end to extreme poverty can potentially be achieved through fiber-optic cables rather than petroleum pipelines. The Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 are fixed; through big data, the potential for precisely architected solutions to end extreme poverty seems infinite.

– Thomas Benjamin
Photo: Flickr

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How ACE Africa Has Impacted Kenya

ACE Africa has

ACE Africa was established in Kenya in 2003 with only four staff members: a U.K. expatriate and three Kenyans. They had a tall order, as the city of Bungoma, Kenya was near the point of collapse in 2003. Nearly one in three households in the community were infected with HIV/AIDS and all government and community structures were falling apart. ACE Africa began their work and 14 years later, Bungoma is a drastically different place.

Focus and Work

ACE Africa focuses on three core areas to improve a community over the long term: child development, community health and wellbeing and community livelihoods. Using specific programs to mold projects to communities in Kenya and East Africa, ACE Africa has grown from four to 58 staff indigenous to Africa and 12,500 community volunteers. ACE Africa is a registered NGO in Kenya, the United Kingdom, the United States and Tanzania, employing small staffs in each country. The organization has also partnered with investment banks, world-leading universities, Dame Judi Dench and other NGOs and international organizations.

In 2010 the Star Foundation, an independent charity founded in London by a wealthy Saudi Arabian family-owned business conglomerate, awarded ACE Africa with an Impact Award. The award was given for the organization’s work in rural Kenya to reduce the spread and increase the treatment of HIV/AIDS. The organization began by opening testing centers and educating the community at all levels about the spread of HIV/AIDS and the necessary treatment. They also educated the population about the importance of a healthy diet, which can improve health increase the productivity of a village. As of 2010, ACE Africa had helped to improve the lives of more than 300,000 children in Kenya.

Beyond Kenya

ACE Africa has begun to branch out of Kenya into the north of Tanzania. In 2014 the organization began working with the Innocent Foundation in Tanzania. According to the Innocent Foundation, the project will last 10 to 12 years. When the project began in 2014, over 93 percent of the wage-earners in the villages where ACE and Innocent are working earn less than $1 a day. Nearly 44 percent of the children in the schools are orphans, and it is estimated that only 4 percent of the villagers eat a balanced diet.

ACE Africa and the Innocent foundation will work with six community organizations within these villages to improve the quality of life. Training the locals ensures that skills will stay and flourish within the community. ACE Africa is working closely with the Tanzania government and more than 7,000 local volunteers to see that this plan succeeds.

ACE Africa’s Impacts

The organization has improved the lives of more than 1 million children through their programs. It has helped to establish more than 500 community garden clubs, resolved more than 12,000 cases of child neglect and abuse and engaged nearly 100,000 children in school guidance programs. ACE Africa has screened roughly 100,000 people for HIV/AIDs and has helped around 80,000 people seek treatment and counseling. As part of their community livelihood programs, the organization has trained more than 35,000 people on the proper techniques for sustainable farming. This has allowed approximately 87,000 kitchen gardens to be established. The group also works with partners and third-parties to research better techniques to help people and make their projects more efficient.

In 2017 ACE Africa founder Jonna Waddington was invited to the Sustainable Development Goals for Africa conference, where the United Nations development plan for Africa through 2030 will be discussed. With six awards and international cooperation and recognition from the United Nations, it appears that ACE Africa will continue to make a positive impact on the world.

– Nicholas Anthony DeMarco
Photo: Flickr

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Three Challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals

Three Challenges of the Sustainable Development GoalsProposed in 2012 and officially adopted in January 2016, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) replaced the Millennium Development Goals to set the priorities of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and to lead concrete actions on the ground. The goals call for the elimination of poverty and hunger by 2030, along with fifteen other targets concerning health, education, gender equality, sanitation, economic equality and climate change.

Some of the challenges encountered while trying to implement the 17 goals by 2030 include slower economic growth, long-lasting corruption and inequality, unfavorable demographics in various forms and widespread epidemics, but there are three surprising challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals that could be easily overlooked, yet require immediate attention.

Data Deprivation

Big data could only be of use if they are collected intelligently and interpreted meaningfully. If it is not known how many people are impoverished or which groups are the most vulnerable to economic adversity, it is not possible to act effectively against poverty. Furthermore, it would not be possible to know how much progress is made over time and, more importantly, which policies worked. This is not the most obvious challenge of the Sustainable Development Goals, yet a surprisingly large one. Proof for this is the statement of the director of the World Bank’s Innovation Labs, Aleem Walji, wrote in 2015 that out of the 155 countries that the World Bank observed and monitored, half of the countries lacked recent poverty estimates.

According to the IMF’s General Data Dissemination System, at least two data points are required within a decade-long interval to give poverty estimates every 3 to 5 years. A World Bank study conducted in 2015 noted that 57 countries out of 155 had less than two data points from 2002 to 2011, another 20 had two data points within one decade that are separated by more than five years, rendering the data inadequate for poverty estimates.

The lack of reliable poverty data makes it impossible for countries to design and implement appropriate policies. Nigeria, among other African countries severely deprived of timely data, represents the dramatic case, since this country was pronounced as the largest economy of the continent only by calculating its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with inadequate information, revealing that decades of policy-making was based on outdated data.

What to prioritize?

The SDGs contain as many as 17 main issues to be addressed, and which ones should governments respectively prioritize could be a tough question. While prioritizing certain SDGs help with other SDGs as well- for example, decreasing poverty could have a positive impact on the good health and well-being of citizens- certain SDGs could be conflicted by their nature. The most notable potential trade-off exists between the second goal, which is ending world hunger, and the 15th goal, which calls for sustainable management of forest land and other terrestrial resources.

As Africa’s population continues to grow, the continent will be in need of safe food sources, wood, and other natural resources more than ever. Agricultural expansion, however, with its high demand for water and land, could potentially invade forest areas and lead to soil degradation, posing significant challenges to the SDGs.

Fortunately, there are strategies that governments could adapt to at least curb the potentially harmful aspects of agriculture: looking for and employing advanced agricultural technology that increases sustainability, ensuring funding as well as sound legal frames to protect small-scale farmers and to ward off harmful agricultural practices, utilizing agricultural growth by ensuring that it not only produces food but also job opportunities as well.

Who is held accountable?

This is perhaps the most significant among the three challenges of the SDGs. All UN member states agreed in August of 2015 to endorse the SDGs, but many may have left the negotiations unsure of where accountability lies. The issues of accountability also have a complicated history, with many developing countries feeling the burden of meeting the given goals, unlike richer countries who are not obliged to support developing countries by providing needed resources or aid.

The “follow-up and review” section of the SDGs agenda is vague since the document itself does not actually contain indicators necessary for measuring progress, nor is there a systematic mechanism for tracking accountability.

Not only should governments be responsible for building the vision of development. The private sector should be accountable as well, especially since Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) are becoming an increasingly popular way of managing public resources via private means in developing countries. The private sector should aware of the impacts of their actions and policies on the planet and on global poverty.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals should not be mere talking points summoned at will. Instead, they need to lead concrete and intelligent actions that are actually impactful. Challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals are numerous, but acquiring reliable data, choosing reasonable and enforceable goals to prioritize and holding the most relevant parties accountable are challenges that the global community needs to address in the most urgent manner.

– Feng Ye
Photo: Flickr

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Leaves of Green? Environmental Degradation and Poverty

environmental degradation and poverty
At a historic United Nations Summit in New York in September 2015, countries from all over the world adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This agenda aims to end poverty and inequality while protecting the environment and ensuring sustainable development. To do this, the agenda established 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be accomplished by 2030. These SDGs emphasize the relationship between environmental degradation and poverty and how sustainable development is critical to achieving these goals.

Sustainable Solutions

Sustainable development is defined by the U.N. as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Such a practice involves using natural resources in a way that will leave future generations with a healthy planet and enough resources for survival.

Earth has only a limited amount of natural resources, and how people and countries currently use these are unsustainable. Current consumption patterns and national policies of developed and developing nations alike are severely damaging the environment and jeopardizing the future of the planet.

Inefficient use of resources, wasteful consumption, pollution and waste are all key factors in environmental degradation. These practices also contribute to global poverty; poverty, in turn, then damages the environment. This vicious cycle will not end unless countries and individuals change their practices.

How Countries and People Harm the Environment

Natural resources are currently allocated to meet the wants of the few instead of the needs of the many. Developed countries account for 24 percent of Earth’s population but consume 70 percent of the world’s energy and 60 percent of its food.

Though developed nations are more energy-efficient than developing nations, consumption is so high that they still contribute a great amount to pollution. The extremely high demand of these countries leads to extensive deforestation so more land can be used for agriculture.

Developing nations further contribute to environmental degradation through inefficient energy use and environmentally-harmful practices like resource stripping. Countries resort to these harmful practices for a variety of reasons. Natural resources account for a majority of many developing countries’ exports. In an attempt to grow their economies, countries overexploit these natural resources.

In addition, a large part of many developing countries’ budgets is used to repay their debt, leaving little money to fund sustainable development programs. Many nations “believe they cannot afford the luxury of environmental protection” and feel forced to accept long-term environmental damage to meet their immediate needs.

Many poorer individuals in developing countries feel the same. They depend on natural resources for their livelihoods, which leads many to deplete these resources in order to survive.

How Harming the Environment Harms People

This environmental degradation disproportionately affects the poor, particularly those in developing nations. Overconsumption in wealthy countries means many people in poor countries don’t have enough food. One billion people worldwide are hungry, yet 1.2 billion are obese.

Air and water pollution are health hazards. Lack of clean water and air and poor sanitation and nutrition leaves people vulnerable to diseases and causes extremely high rates of death among children.

Poor people are also more susceptible to natural disasters, as they are more likely than wealthier individuals to live in areas where earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires and other disasters are common. These disasters destroy people’s livelihoods and homes, often forcing people to move to other areas. These environmental refugees can cause overcrowding and environmental stress in the areas they move to, which worsens both environmental degradation and poverty.

Unless people and countries change their practices, both environmental degradation and poverty will worsen. Natural disasters are becoming both more extreme and more common because of industrialization and human actions. As the world population continues to grow, more and more people will be hungry, live in overcrowded conditions and ultimately, live in poverty. Promoting sustainable development is crucial to a better future.

How to Change

Governments, businesses, organizations and individuals: all have a role to play in the effort to protect the environment and end poverty.

Wealthy nations must change their policies that are detrimental to the environment. Expressing support for the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals and implementing policies that align with these goals provides an example for other nations and encourages them to behave the same.

Foreign aid to developing countries can stabilize their economies, make them more financially and technically capable of focusing on environmentally-friendly development and help them establish practices that are consistent with the SDGs.

Accountability and Responsibility

Governments should also encourage individuals to take more responsibility for living sustainably and educate people on how to do so: eat less meat, shop locally, reduce food waste, use less plastic, recycle, switch to alternative forms of energy — the list goes on and on. (See here for more ways you can live sustainably). Businesses can do many of these actions as well as change their practices to be more environmentally-friendly.

“Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth… these are one and the same fight” said Ban Ki-moon, the previous U.N. Secretary-General. “Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all.” Environmental degradation and poverty are directly related; to end one, the world must address both.

– Laura Turner
Photo: Flickr

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How Japan’s Foreign Policy Solves Global Poverty Problems

Japan’s foreign policy
Japan has an advanced transportation system, outstanding outcomes in the field of technology research and a matured business development model. As the world’s third-largest economy, Japan has been expanding its foreign policies to aid developing countries and boosts the global economy.

From Japan’s international cooperation on Pandemic Influenza to NERICA (New Rice For Africa), Japan plays an essential role in solving urgent and consistent poverty issues. Its foreign policies promote the progress of eliminating poverty worldwide. There are three cases of how Japan’s foreign policy solves global poverty problems.

Examples of Japan’s Foreign Policy

  1. NERICA: Food shortage is a continuous problem in Africa. The main reason is low production field. NERICA stands for New Rice for Africa. The Japanese government cooperated with the Africa Rice Center to introduce this program in 1992. This program is applied extensively in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).The Africa Rice Center cooperated with its partners to produce interspecific hybridization, which can combine advantages of two species to increase the yield of rice. In the meantime, the interspecific grains have better ability to tolerate drought, pest and disease. These grains have higher nutrition as well. Japan has adopted various plans to apply different irrigated rice production technology in Tanzania since the 1970s, which has boosted the yield of rice to three times larger than the national average.In 2014, the total production of milled rice in Uganda was 154,050 metric tonnes, but the consumption rate was 215,707 metric tonnes. NERICA plays a vital role to ameliorate the Ugandan food shortage problem by increasing rice varieties. Most farmers are planting NERICA rice because its mature time is shorter, the yield is higher and it is more tolerant to drought and viruses. For example, NERICA 6 is immune to Yellow Mortal Virus and NERICA 1 only takes 100 days to mature.NERICA is a typical example of how Japan’s foreign policy solves global poverty problems. It ameliorates African food shortage problems efficiently and provides an alternative way for people in SSA to access higher-nutrition and larger-yielding grains.
  2. STI: In September 2015, the U.N. Sustainable Development Summit adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The 2030 Agenda lists 17 goals to eliminate global poverty issues in sustainable ways. Japan continuously contributes itself to achieve the 2030 Agenda.Japan has abundant human resources and advanced technology. It can help reach the agenda through STI, which stands for science, technology and innovation. STI can contribute to boosting development by using limited sources.Japan will contribute its extensive database, which covers from the ocean up to space, to facilitate the efficiency of international cooperation. In addition, Japan will facilitate people-centered development by offering consistent assistance in areas of information and communications technology, research and development, industrial human resources development and vocational training.In 2015, the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation was established to solve social issues and boost economic growth. The Japanese government will spend $1.8 billion on STI in the next three years mainly on high technology development which has international benefits.For example, outbreak alert innovation can reinforce surveillance of infectious diseases, and mobile innovation can facilitate the urban transportation system by using wireless communication for extension of green light. STI acts as a “bridging force” to connect Japan with the globe by assisting technology training processes and sharing developing STI experiences.
  3. Infrastructure Aid: Japan has consistently been sharing its sources on infrastructure building with other countries. For example, in September 2017, Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail was launched when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited India. This high-speed railway corridor stretches from Ahmedabad to Mumbai, which is a total of 508.17 km.This project is the symbol of cooperation between Japan and India. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered $12 billion in loans to build India’s first bullet train. In the meantime, the Japanese government agreed to bear 80 percent of the total project cost when Prime Minister Abe visited India in September of 2017. Assisting in building infrastructure is another way Japan’s foreign policy solves global poverty problems.

Overall, Japan’s foreign policy helps solve global poverty by sharing resources and advanced technology. For Latin America, Japan will promote its development by improving trade and investment to create a more comprehensive environment for economic growth. For the Middle East, Japan works on overcoming peace-building and human resources development, as well as a sustainable and stable energy supply. Japan’s foreign policy solves global poverty problems through science, technology and innovation.

– Judy Lu
Photo: Flickr

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How Infrastructure Investments Alleviate Poverty

Infrastructure Investments Alleviate PovertyOn Friday, Sept. 25, 2015 the U.N. General Assembly embarked on a milestone in development history. Its new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set an ambitious agenda to work toward ending extreme poverty and boosting prosperity by 2030. The SDGs’ platform consists of a collection of 17 global goals each aimed at addressing economic and social issues in developing countries. One such goal was infrastructure, as it has been proven in many different countries that infrastructure investments alleviate poverty.

How Infrastructure Investments Alleviate Poverty

The Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure goal aims to “build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.” Infrastructure is the backbone of any country as it generates jobs, boost economic growth and improves the quality of life for the poor.

Take, for example, a hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo that needs electricity to ensure the safe and healthy delivery of a newborn. A young, rural Cambodian girl needs to have a safe road to walk to school and Bangladesh needs clean water for the essential livelihoods of its citizens. These are just a few of the myriad of ways that infrastructure investments alleviate poverty.

The Costs of Infrastructure Resistance

However, when governments push back on certain infrastructure plans, it comes at an enormous social and economic cost. Roughly 663 million people lack access to clean water, 2.4 billion people do not have adequate sanitation, one-third of the world’s population is not served by an all-weather road and over 1.1 billion people, or almost 16 percent of the world’s population, still have no access to electricity.

The Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure goal has seen a tremendous impact in diminishing these issues and others in emerging countries. Mobile services have spread rapidly and have allowed people to join the global information age. In 2016, 85 percent of people in the least developed countries were covered by a cellular signal. Transportation services also drive economic development and generate wealth and employment. In 2015, the global economic impact of air transport was an estimated $2.7 trillion, or about 3.5 percent of the global gross domestic product.

Infrastructure to Overcome Debt Cycles

One recessive point in global infrastructure came in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession. The West began exporting debt to emerging markets while also purchasing debt from emerging markets. Western fund managers sold forms of credit to developing markets and the total debt rose to $49 trillion in 2014.

Unfortunately, many fail to realize that selling endless cycles of debt will make it incredibly difficult for emerging countries to service their own dollar-dominated debt at home. They will be unable to pay back these loans and growth ultimately stagnates. Fortunately, multilateral development banks are uniquely placed to assist countries in closing these long-term financing gaps. They can help identify failing market areas and create incentives in for the private sector.

Infrastructure investments alleviate poverty in developing countries through the application of projects such as bridges, roads, communication, sewage and electricity. These projects enable both public and private investors to gain on capital appreciation. While servicing the vital infrastructure needs of billions of people, these countries will, along with their booming populations, generate significant prospects for long-term growth and profit for generations to come.

– Aaron Stein
Photo: Flickr

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Top Problems in the World That Can Be Solved

problems in the world that can be solvedWith all the multifaceted problems in the world today, it is difficult to say which are more important than others. However, it is imperative to prioritize certain issues in order to dedicate enough resources to combat the top problems in the world that can be solved.

Top Problems that can be Solved

The Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank that researches the smartest solutions to global issues, organized a panel of five distinguished economists in 2012 to set priorities for fighting the 10 top problems in the world that can be solved:

  1. Armed Conflict
  2. Chronic Disease
  3. Education
  4. Infectious Disease
  5. Population Growth
  6. Biodiversity
  7. Climate Change
  8. Hunger and Malnutrition
  9. Natural Disasters
  10. Water and Sanitation

The panel was asked to describe the best ways to advance global welfare, specifically that of developing countries. The experts then assembled a prioritized list of thirty solutions.

Solutions to the World’s Issues

The number one solution was “bundled interventions to reduce undernutrition in pre-schoolers” and addressed the challenge of hunger and education. Some other proposals high on the list were subsidies for malaria combination treatment and expanding childhood immunization coverage.

The group of experts covered topics besides health, with solutions ranging from investing in early warning systems for natural disasters to increased funding for green energy.

With this list in mind, world leaders at the U.N. Sustainable Development Summit adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Sept. 2015. On Jan. 1, 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) replaced the eight Millennium Development Goals of 2015.

The new 17 SDGs were to:

  1. End poverty
  2. End hunger and improve nutrition and sustainable agriculture
  3. Promote well being for all ages
  4. Ensure equitable and quality education
  5. Achieve gender equality
  6. Ensure water and sanitation for all
  7. Ensure access to modern energy for all
  8. Promote sustainable economic growth and productive employment
  9. Build resilient and innovative infrastructure
  10. Reduce inequality
  11. Make settlements safe, resilient and sustainable
  12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
  13. Take urgent action to combat climate change
  14. Conserve and sustainably use Earth’s water
  15. Promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems and forests, and halt and reverse land degradation and biodiversity loss
  16. Promote peaceful societies, provide access to justice and build effective, accountable institutions
  17. Implement and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

A New Set of Problems

80,000 Hours, an independent nonprofit organization that researches how graduates can make the biggest difference possible with their careers, came up with another list defining problems in the world that can be solved. Drawing from research from groups such as the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and the Copenhagen Consensus Center, 80,000 Hours created a framework to rate global issues.

The organization based its scoring on how solving the problem would reduce the risk of extinction, raise the global economic output, increase the income among the world’s poorest 2 billion people and save years of healthy life. It also used factors like the amount of good done compared to the percent of the problem solved and the number of resources required.

Risks from artificial intelligence topped 80,000 Hours’ list out of 11. Also on the list were biosecurity, developing world health and climate change. Other issues 80,000 Hours has yet to rate include science policy and infrastructure, cheap green energy and promoting human rights. The group indicates that improving health would be more beneficial than topics like empowering the poor and education.

Due to how differently each solution overlaps with others there are various ways to rank a list of top problems in the world that can be solved. Thankfully, experts are doing their best to target issues to focus on and world leaders are taking calculated steps to implement solutions to such issues.

– Connie Loo

Photo: Flickr

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How Social Gastronomy is Helping Reduce Global Poverty

social gastronomy “Food should not only taste good but also do good for society.” With this motto, Gastromotiva has been helping people in conditions of vulnerability and social exclusion through something as simple as food. Since its foundation in 2006 by chef David Hertz, the Brazilian organization has impacted more than 100,000 people globally through education and social gastronomy initiatives.

How Gastromotiva is Helping Those in Need

According to an April 2018 report published by the World Bank, 50 percent of the Brazilian population between ages 19 and 25 is vulnerable to poverty. In this scenario, Gastromotiva uses the power of education, food and gastronomy as a social change agent. The organization acts on three main areas: education, social gastronomy and food waste reduction.

The first project created by Gastromotiva was vocational kitchen training, culinary classes offered for young low-income people at no charge. During the four-month intensive program, students learn not only technical skills but also concepts such as eco-gastronomy, food waste cooking and personal development. After graduating, they are presented with a variety of employment options at Gastromotiva partner restaurants. This way, students become multipliers and empower others by disseminating their knowledge about social gastronomy in their own communities. So far, 4,000 people have graduated.

In addition to the culinary classes, Gastromotiva also offers food entrepreneur classes and acts on the social gastronomy movement, a human-centered solution to generate opportunity, dignity and inclusion through food. The movement involves establishing partnerships with other organizations, gastronomic businesses, chefs and companies all over the world.

“Social gastronomy goes beyond one chef, one meal, one Michelin star,” explains David Hertz in a TED Talk. “When we are all connected we can feel love and respect and with food, we can transform millions of lives.”

Current Endeavors in Social Gastronomy

Most recently, Gastromotiva launched Reffetorio Gastromotiva, a restaurant school in Rio de Janeiro created by chefs Massimo Bottura, David Hertz and the journalist Ale Forbes, to fight food waste, malnutrition and social exclusion. At Reffetorio, chefs host workshops and gastronomy classes and also prepare 450 three-course meals for homeless people every night with food that would otherwise be wasted.

“We give these people not only quality food but also a moment of peace and dignity when they feel like human beings,” said Gastromotiva’s CEO Nicola Gryczka in an interview with The Borgen Project. Gastromotiva collaborates to achieve, until 2030, various Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations, including no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education, decent work and economic growth, reduced inequalities and partnerships for the goals.

Looking Toward the Future

Besides Brazil, Gastromotiva is currently present in three other countries: Mexico (Mexico City), South Africa (Cape Town) and El Salvador (San Salvador). This year, the management team plans to expand the project to Colombia, Argentina and Turkey, where it will implement a program focused on refugees in partnership with World Food Programme.

Gryczka says that the organization is constantly looking for partners in different countries that can help spread the message of social gastronomy and minimize different global problems.

“Because it’s something that impacts all our lives, food is the easiest way to help people find solutions for social issues, such as hunger, poverty, malnutrition and unemployment,” she points out. This is what Gastromotiva means by “food should do good for society.”

– Júlia Ledur

Photo: Flickr